The Slow Food Presidium of the Harenna Forest Wild Coffee

Ethiopia is the country where we think coffee was born, in fact there are many legends about the discovery of the plant and obviously of the drink that derives from the infusion of toasted coffee beans in hot water. We must highlight the fact that we are talking about the only example of wild coffee in the world and thanks to this peculiarity it has become one of the Slow Food Coffee Presidia.

Ten per cent of Ethiopia’s Gross Domestic Product derives from the production of coffee and it represents a source of income for 25% of the population. In Ethiopia, until a few years ago, coffee was harvested only for domestic use, but recently the locals have understood that they were managing a real treasure, so Ethiopian coffee has become part of the global market.

The Harenna Forest, one of the largest in the country, is situated in the mountains of the Bale National Park, at an altitude of about 1800 meters, in the Oromia region and here a high quality Arabica coffee grows spontaneously in the shade of the tall trees. The production of this coffee mostly depends on the families that live in the forest which harvest, store it in bags and sell it.

The harvesting of the ripe coffee cherries is carried out exclusively by hand and it is often hindered by baboons which are very greedy for them. Gatherers choose the cherries carefully and put them in typical conical baskets made of dried plaited leaves. In addition to being wild this coffee has another peculiarity; in fact, differently from Latin American species, after being harvested the cherries need neither washing nor stripping (also called decortication it consists in separating the bean from its skin), and are dried in the sun on suspended nets. This coffee is completely natural, in the true sense of the word; it goes directly from the plant to the nets where it is dried and then straight into the bags ready to be sold. One may think that as this processing involves very few phases it is synonymous with simplicity, but it is not so, as in fact the coffee can only rely on its amazing organoleptic properties to compete with the other excellent qualities on the market.

At present, unfortunately, when people go to the supermarket they do not want to know from where the coffee that they are buying comes or who harvested and dried it. But it would be worthwhile thinking about everything that lays behind the finished product and this is one of the main goals of all Slow Food projects: raising consumers' awareness (transforming them into co-producers), making them wonder about what they are buying and, consequently, what they are serving on their tables.

The Harenna Forest Wild Coffee Presidium was born in 2006, when the first group of volunteers of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity went to the villages where the harvesters and producers live. The Italian volunteers not only discovered the close relationship between these people and the forest in which they live, but also this extraordinary variety of coffee and its fundamental role both for the locals and for the whole country.